Secular space: bridging the religious-secular divide?

One of the goals in a
new report
on women and Arab Spring by CARE International is to build bridges between
religious and secular women. Gita
Sahgal says this fails to address the real problem: the rise of fundamentalism
and the lack of clarity on the need for a secular state.

In discussions of the ongoing revolutions in the Middle East, much is
made of an opposition between older secular women’s organisations and today’s
youth movements. Far too little attention is given to the importance of
secularism as a value for the state and the need for secular space as an
important pre-condition for the advancement of human rights.

When I say secularism, I do not mean the absence of religion but rather
a state structure that defends both freedom of expression and freedom of
religion or belief, where there is no state religion, where law is not derived
from God and where religious actors cannot impose their will on public policy.
A secular state does not simply limit religion, it also maintains the essential
right of religious freedom as a duty not a favour. This means that it defends
the freedom to worship and the right to maintain churches and temples,
unhindered, and also defends minorities from attack.

Religious freedom also includes the right to challenge dominant
religious interpretations, to change religions, and to leave religion
altogether. These rights are crucial, not only for women, but for religious
minorities, and a secular state is necessary to defend them. In fact it is the only kind of state in which
religious fundamentalists have a voice that is capable of limiting the
inevitable harm they will cause. As the
case
of Bangladesh shows, a
state with a secular constitution on the one hand, and a strong feminist-led
civil society on the other, will deliver far better outcomes for development
in general and for gender
equality than a state ruled by religion.

The divide, therefore is not inherently between the religious and
secular, but between the anti-secular and those with secular values. In the UK,
a major anti-secular force is the state’s promotion of political Islam, along
with those who attack secular values from a post-modernist or Islamic feminist
standpoint. Those with secular values include many religious conservatives who
nonetheless want a separation between religion and the state, along with
religious minorities, youth and women’s rights activists, free thinkers, and
atheists who want a state in which they have the space for their voice,
activism and beliefs. The first group are dominant in policy making of both
governments and INGOs, while the second are among those voicing their
frustrations at NGOisation of civil society and donor attitudes .

CARE's recommendationa include the need to treat gender equality
seriously, and to reflect some of the views of activists and NGOs about whether
the accountability frameworks put in place by donor governemtns are working.
The chief obstacle to all these goals is the rise of fundamentalist movements
in the region. But the CARE report does
not focus on the dangers these movements bring; instead it wants
to “bridge the religious-secular divide.”

There is certainly a conversation to be had between religious and
secular (irreligious) women, and between those in the youth movement and in the
old line NGOs. Indeed they will all
find themselves fighting on many fronts simultaneously. In some parts of the
region, as
in Tunisia, the struggle is to hold onto gains made in past regimes. But it
is also a struggle to hold on to the existing space for women’s activism that
exists in customary practices.

We must never make the mistake of thinking of Islamists simply as
religious conservatives. While the Muslim Brotherhood, for instance, has certainly
made accommodation at various times with conservatives, including dictatorial
regimes, their
critique of CEDAW in March 2013, shows that they are intent on
rolling back existing local norms, not merely opposing international human
rights norms that they deem to be‘Western’. For instance, they complain that
the Convention will ‘Cancel the obligatory authorization of the husband in:
travel, work or going out or use (of ) contraception’. In many Muslim-majority
countries, women already exercise these freedoms. Grasping this fact, and using
it in developing policy and programmes,
allows a different set of assumptions to take root about how to maintain and
expand secular space.

Even without a secular state, the places in which the religious and
non-religious can strengthen their strategies and work together are crucial.
Journalists’ and bloggers’ associations, grassroot development groups, human
rights organisations (which are genuinely universalist) and women’s networks
are important secular spaces. Global networks such Women Living Under Muslim Laws or
Musawah are important actors in
keeping discussion alive between those who are religious and those who are not.

What these networks do is often misunderstood by international actors.
WLUML, for instance, has been valorised for promoting ‘value pluralism’ by a human
rights professor in the US and lauded for separating true
religion from corrupt culture by a British academic. Neither of these claims is accurate, and both
undermine the careful work on legal pluralism undertaken over many years by
WLUML, which has opposed the
spread of such dual legal systems as Shari’a courts, jirgas
and systems to codify customary law. Many thinkers and activists, myself
included, rely on understandings built through such networks and reflected in
the human rights literature.

Networks by definition have participants with different views. So, for
instance, Musawah has undoubtedly faced difficult discussions about what sort
of Muslims are to be part of it - only those who are visibly observant or
anyone. Its extraordinary founders, who include the feminist theologian Amina
Wadud, based in
the US, and the Malaysian organization Sisters in Islam,
clearly understand that they need to operate in a secular space without which
they simply would not be able to conduct their feminist interpretations of
religion. Sisters in Islam has been attacked
by religious extremists, has warned against the rise of
fundamentalism and has protested against its government’s collusion with the
Saudis in the case of Hamza
Kashgari, the young man who was deported from Malaysia and
imprisoned for blasphemy because of his tweets.

The silence of all too many western feminists, whether 'Islamic' or
secular, on these matters, speaks eloquently.

It is not surprising that there is such a silence. Like other social
theory, much women’s rights theory for the last two decades has depended on the
notion that fundamental progressive change is not possible. For the past thirty
years or so, the dominant trend in the academy has been to assume that
religiosity is rising, that the desire for liberty and equality are quaint
nineteenth century ideas, and that we must get on with the programme of working
within religion and focus on making minute incremental changes.

In the field of security, this has led to the designation of some of
the most dangerous and murderous movements of our time as ‘moderates’. It is
not my contention to argue that all religious fundamentalists are the same. But
I do think that the term ‘moderate Islamist’ is an oxymoron. As the Egyptian journalist Ibrahim
Essa, who was arrested 70 times under Mubarak, said, ‘Under
Mr. Mubarak, I was threatened only with prison; under Mr. Morsi, my life was in
danger’. As feminist and secular activists mostly from the global south told Human
Rights Watch, for many Western powers the coming to power of
the Muslim Brotherhood was their Plan B. If not one strong man, then another.

I would be interested to know whether any real ‘due diligence’ has been
done to assess the harm done by the policy of treating the Muslim Brotherhood
and the Jamaat e Islami as partners of government at various points in the ‘War
on Terror’. Indeed, so enthusiastic has the British government been in these
partnerships that they awarded
the National Health Service post of Muslim Spiritual Care Provision to Chowdury
Mueen Uddin, founder of the Jamaat-linked Muslim Council of Britain, vice-chair
of the East London Mosque, and a leader of the attack on The
Satanic Verses. Mueen Uddin
has just been convicted
of war crimes in Bangladesh - in war crimes trials that signal at least the
partial defeat of Islamists in Bangladesh.
In 1994, I worked with David Bergman and many others to make "The
War Crimes File" for Channel 4 television, the
first British investigation into Muen Uddin’s activities. To
my surprise, the response of the British authorities was to ignore the
allegations against him and to entertain both Mueen Uddin and Maulana Motiur Rahman
Nizami, then leader of the Jamaat e Islami, at Chatham House.

In Iran, the Islamists won, and the revolution led to a massive
backlash against rights in general. Yet as the CARE report shows, Even under
the most adverse conditions, women continue to struggle. Some 'Islamic'
feminists such as Dr. Ziba Mir
Hosseini and others studying Iran found that the gains they made,
apparently working ‘within’ religion were modest. Many feminists went out on
the streets to demand democracy in the Green movement and before. Would they
have taken the risk of public and secular campaigning if they had found it
possible to reform the Islamic regime, fatwa by fatwa?

The Iran example tends to be used to frame as desirable strategies of
internal reform efforts which have yielded little, and were actually taken up
under conditions of extreme repression, after the brutal defeat of the
progressive movement. Iranian feminists working within Iran would not
necessarily see their choices as anti-secular. In fact, they smuggled secular
demands into their work, although they did not label them as such. The Million Signatures Campaign
to demand justice in family laws was a bottom up approach, using
activists to contact ordinary people to create a climate for reform signature
by signature. They did not demand justice under Shari'a, or limit themselves to
pleading with the Ayatollahs to issue better fatwas.

The CARE report
suggests that “prominent religious institutions, such as Al-Azhar, can use
their unique authority to espouse moderate views of Islam and the role of
women.” The assumption that women will
get progressive fatwas is rather sanguine; what happens if they get a fatwa
which is contrary
to the goal of gender equality? Societies where
extremist narratives spread and become common currency are not likely to be
resilient in handling attacks on rights. Whether in Manouba University or
Benghazi, it is mass public disapproval that succeeds - fighting to keep a
secular space that is inclusive but free of jihadi influence.

There are rocky times ahead, but reform may still be possible, and it
is crucial to look closely at the relationship between religion, the state and
civic space - and to get it right. This is why it is so important for
international NGOs to be very wary of entering into alliances with
fundamentalists, or trying to reform religion. This is not their job, and what
they may end up doing is shrinking secular space for both religious and atheist
feminist work.

About the author

Gita Sahgal is a founder of the Centre for Secular Space, which opposes fundamentalism, amplifies secular voices and promotes universality in human rights. She was formerly Head of the Gender Unit at Amnesty International. Gita has served on the board of Southall Black Sisters and was a founder of Women Against Fundamentalism and Awaaz: South Asia Watch.

This article is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 licence.
If you have any queries about republishing please contact us.
Please check individual images for licensing details.

openDemocracy 50.50

100% independent media covering gender, sexuality and social justice – worldwide. In 2017 we need this more than ever. Every £1 goes into producing and publishing more in-depth and critical journalism, commentary and analysis from women from around the globe. Contribute today.

50.50 on Twitter

Tiffany Kagure MugoAFRO-SEXUALITY SPEAKEASYTalking about sex, sexual identity and sexuality in an easy and lubricated way, taking some of the serious out of the sexual and reproductive health and rights conversation.

Claudia TorrisiL'ITALIA FEMMINISTAMonthly features about gender and human rights in Italy. Reporting on sexism, racism, poverty and other connected systems of oppression. Mediterranean intersectionality.